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Strangely, I have frequently made the mistake of thinking Bonnard was English (as if Pierre wasn’t obvious enough), considered him someone who trained in Paris rather than someone French. I think it’s because his version of post impressionism is a little more open and explorative, lacking the rigidity of people like Seurat or Gauguin, his work is more inconsistent and muted than his contemporaries, as if he’s looking for something else. He is perhaps more of a modernist, more Bloomsbury than Arles. In saying this however I am thinking about his paintings specifically. His drawings are a different thing all together. They lack the decorative elegance of his paintings, they are colourless and edgy. Bonnard’s observations of Parisian life are full of energy, they have an authenticity to them, there is no doubt that they are made in the moment, and he is there. In this drawing, ‘Study for Conversation’ Pencil, pen and ink on paper, 1893, 15.5 × 20.3 cm, a man and a woman appear to confront each other, the ‘conversation’ seems less than friendly, the man’s face, grotesque and aggressive, is contorted in anger. The woman appears more submissive, tearful and frightened, reproached by the man for something we’ll never know. It looks as if the drawing has been made initially with pencil as a response to something Bonnard is witnessing first hand and then its main assets reinforced later with heavier ink. The woman’s tangle of curly hair and bonnet, her fearful profile, the man’s seemingly mangled mouth; too close to the woman for comfort, spitting, behind a ragged walrus moustache, these are all picked out by Bonnard. There is something in the background, it looks like a carriage being driven by a coachman, reinforcing the context. I imagine the scene witnessed at street level through the window of a café. Our proximity to the action supports this theory. Bonnard’s marks both in his paintings and his drawings flatten the image, we are aware of the surface. A colourist, he developed a way of drawing that incorporated a vocabulary of marks that replaced colour or became a kind of shorthand for colour. The paper has another drawing on the back of it, its indentations and darker areas are visible in the background of ‘study for conversation’ adding to the depth of the image, the mystery of the subject, and the sense of Bonnard quietly recording life.